nne,
an old friend of mine, walked up to Barry Sears at the Tom Landry
Sports Medicine and Research Center in Dallas.

She complained that the program outlined in his book, Enter
The Zone -- more lean meat, egg whites, poultry and fish, while
limiting many grains, vegetables, and fruits -- just didn't work
for her. She didn't feel good, and her performance level
(swimming) had declined. Anne was now back on her vegetables,
fruits, and whole grains.

"Stay with what works best," he said, "but you
know, Anne, it's not the fat and protein that's so important.
It's the effect of carbohydrates upon hormones and insulin
levels."

Though this was contrary to everything I had told her about
nutrition, the book's message was loud and clear: "All those
trendy high-carbohydrate diets," he had written, "may
be increasing your risk of developing heart disease."

Excessive complex carbohydrates, according to Sears, also
causes obesity by increasing insulin output and fat storage. This
is the process, he insists, that creates bad eicosanoids leading
to heart disease and cancer.

"To complete a 'Zone-favorable' meal," he advises,
"always add fat, the building blocks for eicosanoids."
While it's true that eicosanoids are hormones involved in many
metabolic processes, the relation of "bad" eicosanoids
to obesity and disease is at best a scientifically unproven
gimmick. Unfortunately, however, it has captured the
unquestioning reader's imagination.

Every few years since the early 1950's, someone has based a
book on carbohydrate bashing. First, there were the Dr.
Stillman's Diet and Dr. Atkins' Diet followed by The Scarsdale
Diet, and finally, Enter The Zone. Now there are others: Michael
and Mary Dan Eases's Protein Power and Rachael and Richard
Heller's Health For Life.

And once again Dr. Atkins New Diet Revolution is back on the
bestseller lists. According to Bonnie Liebman, at the Center For
Science in the Public Interest, it's nothing new. "Miracle
diets come and go like hemlines, hair-dos, and celebrity
romances." Furthermore, they don't work; and all of them
have the potential of raising low density lipoprotein (LDL)
levels. And finally, what do these diets do for the authors
themselves? Both Dr. Atkins and Barry Sears have exceeded the
upper limits of weight recommended by federal guidelines.

A vegetarian diet, according to Sears, is as far as you can
get from The Zone. He ignores the fact that individuals who eat
vegetarian diets have far less heart disease and cancer, and tend
to be leaner, not fatter. Moreover, most clinical studies
conducted during the last half century, clearly show that a
high-protein, high-fat, low-carbohydrate diet leads to higher
rates of heart disease, stroke, hypertension, adult onset
diabetes, and many types of cancer.

The relationship of animal fat to cancer is stronger than ever
before. According to new studies released by the Environmental
Protection Agency, potent carcinogens from industrial wastes,
such as dioxin and other chlorinated compounds, are known to be
concentrated in the animal fat of meat, fish, and dairy products.
On the other hand, vegetables, fruits, and grains contain only
small amounts of these compounds.

So why is the Zone diet so popular? It's followers defend it
vehemently, largely because they find the rapid weight loss
irresistible. Like most low carbohydrate diets, however, a great
deal of the weight loss is dehydration. Ordinarily, three grams
of water are stored with every gram of carbohydrates in the form
of glycogen in the liver and skeletal muscles. When this is
sharply limited, the desperate "zonies" think they are
losing up to a pound of fat a day. It's also low in calories
(about 1,700), causing the unhealthy depletion of lean body mass
along with the minimal fat loss.

Also, without careful monitoring, this type of diet may lead
to "ketosis" (an unnatural form of acidosis), which
often causes some degree of anorexia and even euphoria. Sears
denies that this happens with the amount of carbohydrates he
allows.However, Dr. Atkins, another proponent of high protein,
high fat, low carbohydrate consumption, considers ketosis to be a
useful and necessary state. If ketosis sounds familiar, it's also
the result when insulin-dependent diabetics can't metabolize
carbohydrates without their insulin injections -- a state leading
up to diabetic coma.

The Sears diet recommends that one get 30 percent of calories
from fat, 30 percent from protein, and 40 percent from
carbohydrates. Here, it should be obvious that these are
approximately the proportions already consumed in most Western
countries, including the United States, where heart disease and
cancer are rampant. Furthermore, with such low intakes of complex
carbohydrates, it appears that Sears' recommended diet would be
deficient in vegetables, fruits, and whole grains -- and would
contain inadequate fiber. Adding insult to injury, this level of
protein consumption may promote calcium loss and osteoporosis.

Sears has very little to say about cholesterol levels in his
book. He writes, "if cholesterol is such a villain, why does
the body make so much of it?" The real heart disease risk,
he says, is "hyperinsulinemia and bad ecosinoids." He
is either unaware that practically all published reports indicate
just the opposite, or he hasn't thoroughly read his own book --
written with the help of professional magazine writer, Bill
Lawren. It's riddled with such comments as, "eating fat
doesn't make you fat." It cautions that such foods as
potatoes, brown rice, bread, corn, carrots, pasta, bananas, dry
breakfast cereals, apple juice and orange juice may be harmful to
your health. None of the references quoted, backing these
conclusions, have ever been published, and the book does not
contain a reference section or a bibliography.

So in summary, a half century of scientific research, first
from Ansel Keyes' population studies in the 1950's to T.Colin
Campbell's ongoing Cornell-Oxford-China Nutrition project today,
has given us a wealth of data supporting the health benefits of
carbohydrates. "The Zone" would be a giant step
backward. A little weight loss, which is quickly regained when
the diet is no longer tolerated, isn't worth the inevitable
long-term health risk.